How do you get a good workout if you’re not even paying attention to what you’re doing?
TV! I don’t have cable at home, so I go to the gym if I want to watch something 
I’d go nuts without something to engage my mind.
Commercials are when you do high intensity intervals!
Cardio can be fun, if you want it to be. Dance dance revolution, Wii Fit, hula hooping, jumping on a trampoline. I’ve always found weightlifting pretty boring, though.
Cite???
If you like TaeKwonDo, see if your gym offers kickboxing/BodyCombat/TurboKick types of classes. It’s the same type of skills and it’s a great workout.
Oh wait, that’s just an opinion. NM.
Exercise is meditation. Alone with my own thoughts, at last.
Or swimming. Have someone drop you off in the middle of a lake; hard to get bored when you are swimming for your life!
I’m with Trom check out CrossFit or something. 15 minutes and you will feel every second of it, but it’s done!
As far as longer cardio, when I am running (like for a half or a training run) I just zone out. I have music or podcasts for a little distraction (also the game RUN! Zombies!), but it’s partially training your mind to just stick with it and finish.
Bicycle, preferably a mountain bike. Scenery changes and I get a good dose of dopamine to go with my workout.
I’ve been doing a Zumba class weekly. There’s no way to be bored in there. It’s hilarious, besides making me work really hard.
Otherwise I’ve been doing resistance training and cycling. For resistance training, I listen to podcasts - typically fitness podcasts. Reminds me why I’m doing it or something. If I can bike outside, I do. If I’m stuck inside on the exercise bike, I ride as hard as I can for a shorter time and listen to fast workout music to keep myself hoppin’.
Variety helps me. Plus I enjoy the time to get a bit bored … the mind wandering on a long slow run is a very relaxing thing, decadent really. My elliptical though is set up so I can watch streamed Netflix and recorded shows while on it … I’ve been working my way through Breaking Bad. For the rower I personally don’t do more than 20 minutes of so at a crack and handle it as a intense aerobic activity, trying to max out my average power output over the time period or doing intervals of various sorts.
I suspect however that you, AU, may do best by setting yourself goals and monitoring your progress. And some skills based activities so your focus is on the skill mastery while you just happen to also be in target zone. Speed jump roping, bodyweight balance work (there are some great sites of gymnastics for fitness for the non-gymnast), and yes, group classes like Zumba.
Does your high school have a cross-country team? If so, go out for cross-country when the season comes around. You won’t make varsity, but who cares? You’ll still get the workouts if you’re on JV or whatever is below that. Nothing like a coach hollering at you and a bunch of your compatriots to keep you moving.
In the meantime, start running, but I recommend starting off with a short distance. If you’re a couch potato, it may surprise you how hard it is to run even a half mile when you’re just starting to work your way into shape. At 15, it should get easier fairly quickly, but the first time may hit like a ton of bricks.
Get one of your parents to use the car’s odometer to figure out how far down the road a quarter-mile is, and start off by running there and back - a half mile, total. Once that becomes something that isn’t that hard to do, you can (and should) start lengthening the distance.
True that. I am a couch potato (with the computer) and I ran for about ten minutes (or maybe a little more) yesterday and it felt like a lot of work. But yeah, thanks for the tips. We have a bike trail and everything near our house that I need to exercise. It’s just that I need to actually…do it, which is what I will do.
Thanks for all the tips RTFirefly and DSeid.
AU, for your new running ambitions, have you considered an interval training program like Couch to 5K? Lots of Dopers have had luck with it. I just (re)started, but am using a program called Bridge to 10K, since I’m looking to increase my stamina.
There are a ton of apps out there that make this even easier. The one I have plays any music or podcasts you like, and gives you verbal cues for when to run, when to walk, when to turn around (if your path isn’t a loop), when you have one minute left of each run/walk segment. I’ve also heard of some running apps that will sort your music by BPM, allowing you to run to the beat, but I don’t have any experience with that.
I have a bike path near my house too, and the days I’m not jogging on it, I walk the dogs along it anyway. I also bought a fancy camera recently, and have been photographing the birds I see on the creek by the path. Yesterday I saw over 20 species, including ducklings and a killdeer chick!
I shut it down in the first 40 seconds. yuck
yeah, this. I miss being able to bike and swim and walk places